In this post, Digital Content Style Guide Intern Hannah Watson examines the research and existing guidance that have supported our work on the University’s style guide.
The UX team have recently been working to refresh the University’s editorial style guide. As part of my internship, I have been doing research to assist with this project. This has involved exploring other style guides and looking at the evidence they provide to support their choices. These resources have enhanced our understanding of digital content guidance, allowing us to provide more precise and nuanced information as we develop the editorial style guide at the University.
In this post, I’ll cover some of the most useful of these sources, why they have been helpful and how they can help you when working on your own content. This post may also be useful to anyone outside of the University who is looking to update a style guide.
Australian Government Style Manual
The Australian Government provide a comprehensive style guide designed for publishers on government sites within the country. Their guidance often aligns with the University of Edinburgh’s guidance and so has helped us to better understand some of the stylistic positions taken by the University. This has helped us to provide more thorough guidance with better examples for users to follow.
In particular, the Australian Government Style Manual has helped us with the formatting and punctuation sections of our style guide. Specific examples in these sections helped us to reflect on our style guide and consider what these aspects could look like.
The Australian Government Style Manual also has a heavy emphasis on ensuring accessibility of their web publications. We wanted to keep this in mind for our guidance as this is also a top priority for University publications.
Australian Government Style Manual
Content Design London’s Readability Guidelines
Content Design London are a content design consultancy company in the UK. Working with Lizzie Bruce and a large group of collaborators, they produced a detailed guide called the Readability Guidelines. This offers guidance, context, examples, and further reading on each topic covered within the guidelines.
Once again, this set of guidelines has been useful in editing and rewriting all of the style guide sections so far: formatting, punctuation, and using plain language. Especially helpful has been the extensive list of references that they include at the end of each page, meaning that if anything is unclear, or even just interesting, the option to do a deeper dive into that topic is always available. This has also been valuable when creating an evidence base for our style guide, as it means there is not a shortage of discourse on each section.
You can view Content Design London’s guidelines if you are interested in learning more about what influences decisions made withing web publishing guides.
Content Design London’s readability guidelines
Caroline Jarrett’s post on plain language and Plain English
Caroline Jarrett’s post, ‘Why plain language and Plain English are different’, has helped us to clarify terms used when having discussions about plain language use. The article explains how often these terms are used interchangeably despite having different, context-dependent meanings. This has helped us to be clear and precise in our descriptions and examples of plain language in the style guide.
Why plain language and Plain English are different
University of Reading’s Centre for Information Design Research
A team from the University of Reading were commissioned to assess the content principles used by GOV.UK. They used both quantitative and qualitative studies to illustrate why these principles exist and why they work. For example, they use a study by Nielsen Norman Group which concluded that users tend to scan in an ‘F-shaped pattern’. If content is structured so it can be scanned in this way, the accessibility and readability of the content is improved.
This is reflected in our guidance on formatting in our style guide, which emphasises clear and concise headings with accurate hierarchies, avoiding long blocks of text, and using well-formatted lists.
GOV.UK content principles: conventions and research background
NHS digital service manual
The NHS digital service manual explains why having a guide for digital content is necessary. This is specifically in reference to health literacy (the ability of the general public to understand content related to health). They explain that unclear, inconsistent content can have a knock-on effect when it comes to the decision making of digital content users. This is relevant to the University, albeit on a smaller scale, since inconsistencies could lead to a spread of misinformation throughout the University.
Content guide – NHS digital service manual
Conclusion
Overall, these resources have provided us with additional context, evidence, and examples to help us improve the efficiency and usability of the editorial style guide. If you are looking for additional information on a particular area of the guide, then they are likely an ideal place to start.
